than we should were he to call us to account to-day, because no resentment
mingles with our intellectual appreciation: our withers seem to be
unwrung. The crucifixions of a former age are always denounced by those
who, if the martyr fell into their hands, would be the first to nail him
to the cross.

But the Puritanism of Williams, and that of those who banished him, were
as two branches proceeding from a single stem; their differences, which
were the type of those that created two parties in the community, were the
inevitable result of the opposition between the practical and the
theoretic temperaments. This opposition is organic; it is irreconcilable,
but nevertheless wholesome; both sides possess versions of the same truth,
and the perfect state arises from the contribution made by both to the
common good--not from their amalgamation, or from a compromise between
them, Williams's community was successful, but it was successful, on the
lines he laid down, only during its minority; as its population increased,
civil order was assured by a tacit abatement of the right of individual
independence, and by the insensible subordination of particular to general
interests. In Massachusetts, on the other hand, which from the first
inclined to the practical view--which recognized the dangers surrounding
an organization weak in physical resources, but strong in spiritual
conviction, and which, by reason of the radical nature of those
convictions, was specially liable to interference from the settled power
of orthodoxy:--in Massachusetts there was a diplomatic tendency in the
work of building up the commonwealth. The integrity of Williams's logic
was conceded, but to follow it out to its legitimate conclusions was
deemed inconsistent with the welfare and continuance of the popular
institutions. The condemnation of dissenters from dissent sounded unjust;
but it was the alternative to the more far-reaching injustice of suffering
the structure which had been erected with such pains and sacrifice to fall